MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday repeated his opposition to any military action against Iran because of that country’s nuclear program.
No Caspian Sea country should let its territory be used by other countries “for aggressive or military operations against another Caspian state,” said Putin, who is attending a meeting in Tehran of the leaders of the five countries that border the inland sea.
The leaders of the countries, which also include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, jointly made a similar statement, signaling the opposition of Iran’s neighbors to any military action by the United States or its allies.
None of Iran’s neighbors had indicated open willingness to support military action. But as tensions rise over Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, there have been fears in the region that the United States might want to use bases in Azerbaijan for strikes against Iran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “The Caspian Sea is an inland sea, and it only belongs to the Caspian states. Therefore, only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here.”
Putin is the first leader from Moscow to visit Iran since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin met with President Franklin Roosevelt and British leader Winston Churchill at a World War II summit in 1943.
Tuesday’s meeting was designed to continue the process of working out territorial disputes over dividing up the Caspian Sea’s rich resources of oil and natural gas. But it was overshadowed by the growing standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
Putin met separately with Ahmadinejad and was scheduled to have dinner with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although Russia has signed on to two rounds of mild economic sanctions at the United Nations, Putin is skeptical of stronger sanctions and believes they would fail, insulating Iran from further diplomatic pressure, according to Kremlin officials.
Putin has said there is no evidence that Iran’s nuclear program has a military dimension, but the Kremlin nonetheless has halted construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, ostensibly because of a financial dispute. Most analysts here believe that the Kremlin was angered by Iran’s unwillingness to accept a Russian proposal to enrich uranium for Iran’s program on Russian soil.
Putin refused to say Tuesday whether the nuclear plant on the Persian Gulf could open before he leaves office next year.
“I only gave promises to my mom when I was a small boy,” Putin told Iranian reporters. “At the same time, we are not going to renounce our obligations.”
